Friends, I have promised you this conqueft; but there is one condition which you must fwear to fulfil, which is to respect the people to be delivered by you, to reprefs the horrible pillages committed by wretches excited to it by our enemies; without that you will not be the deliverers of the people, you will become their fcourge, you will become the difhonour of Frenchmen. They will difclaim you, your victories, your courage, your fuccefs, the blood of our brethren flain in battle-all will be loft, even honour and glory itself.

Though myfelf and the generals who poffefs your confidence may blush to command an army undifciplined, unbridled, who knew no law but force, yet invefted with the national authority, ftrengthened by juftice and the law, I fhall know how to make thofe fmall number of men, divested of courage and feeling, refpect the laws of humanity which they tread under their feet. I will not suffer robbers to fully your laurels. I will have the regulations I have adopted executed with rigour, Pillagers fhall be fhot without mercy. Already I have had reason to remark with fatisfaction, the eagerness the foldiers of the army have fhewn to execute thefe orders.

Italians, the French army comes to break afunder your chains. The French are the friends of all people. Come before them with confidence; your property, religion, and cuftoms fhall be refpected. We wage not war with you as enemies in general; we only defire it with the tyrants who oppress you.

(Signed)

BUONAPARTE.

Letter from General Baron Kray, giving Notice of the Termination of the Armistice on the Rhine, to the Commandant-General of the French advanced Poft.

General,

HIS Royal Highnefs Archduke Charles, general in chief of the

Imperial army, and the army of the Empire on the Lower Rhine, has acquainted me, that, much as it was the wifh of his Imperial Majefty to prevent the fufferings of humanity from another campaign, the difinclination of the French directory on that head force him to fupprefs his pacific fentiments, and to have again recourfe to arms to terminate an unfortunate war, which entirely militates against his feelings. Agreeably to this, I have the honour to acquaint you that the officer who carries this letter, has orders to remain with you till after the expiration of ten days after his arrival at your advanced pofts, according to the ftipulation of the armiftice; and that the armiftice fhall be at an end the momcat in which this period expires. You will have the goodness to attest the arrival of the officer, and to acquaint me of having received

that notice.

May 21, 1796.
VOL. III.-PART ii.

BARON DE KRAY, Lieut. General.
PAPERS

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Papers relative to Neutral Powers.

AMERICA.

Legation of Philadelphia.
Foreign Relations.

Private Correspondence of the Minifter on Politics.

Philadelphia, the 10th Brumaire, third year of the French Republic, one and indivisible, (O&t.31,1794.)

Jofeph Fauchet, Minifter Plenipotentiary of the French Republic, to the United States, to the Commiffioner of Foreign Relations.* Citizen,

1. THE measures which prudence prefcribes to me to take, with refpect to my colleagues, have ftill prefided in the digeftion of the difpatches figned by them, which treat of the infurrection of the weltern countries, and of the repreffive means adopted by the government. I have allowed them to be confined to the giving of a faithful, but naked recital of events; the reflections therein contained fcarcely exceed the conclufions easily deducible from the character affumed by the public prints. I have reserved myself to give you, as far as I am able, a key to the facts detailed in our reports. When it comes in queftion to explain, either by conjecture or by certain data, the fecret views of a foreign government, it would be imprudent to run the rifque of indifcretions, and to give one's felf up to men whofe known partiality to that government, and fimilitude of paffions and interefls with its chiefs, might lead to confequences the iffue of which is incalculable. Befides the precious confeffions of Mr. Randolph alone throw a fatisfactory light upon every thing that comes to pafs. These I have not as yet communicated to my colleagues. The motives already mentioned lead to this referve, and ftill lefs permit me to open myself to them at the prefent moment. I fhall then endeavour, citizen,

It has been thought neceffary to publish this intercepted Letter of M. Fauchet, and fome extracts from his political difpatches, in this collection of State Papers. Mr. Randolph has published a long juftification of his conduct.

to

to give you a clue to all the measures of which the common dirpatches give you an account, and to difcover the true caufes of the explosion which it is obftinately refolved to repress with great means, although the state of things has no longer any thing alarming.

2. To confine the prefent crifis to the fimple question of the excife, is to reduce it far below its true fcale; it is indubitably connected with a general explofion for fome time prepared in the public mind, but which this local and precipitate eruption will caufe to mifcarry, or at least check for a long time. In order to see the real cause, in order to calculate the effect, and the confe quences, we must afcend to the origin of the parties exifting in the ftate, and retrace their progrefs.

3. The prefent fyftem of government has created mal-contents. This is the lot of all new things. My predeceffors have given information in detail upon the parts of the fyftem which have particularly awakened clamours, and produced enemies to the whole of it. The primitive divifions of opinions as to the political form of the ftate, and the limits of the fovereignty of the whole over each state individually fovereign, had created the federals and the antifederals. From a whimsical contraft between the name and the real opinion of the parties, a contraft hitherto little understood in Europe, the former aimed, and still aim with all their power, to annihilate federalifm, whilft the latter have always wifhed to preferve it. The contraft was created by the confolidators or the con ftitutionalists, who being the first in giving the denominations, (a matter fo important in a revolution,) took for themselves that which. was the most popular, although in reality it contradicted their ideas, and gave to their rivals one which would draw on them the attention of the people, notwithstanding they really wished to preferve a system whose prejudices should cherish at least the memory and the name.

4. Moreover thefe firft divifions, of the nature of those to be destroyed by time, in proportion as the nation fhould have advanced in the experiment of a form of government which rendered it flourishing, might now have completely disappeared, if the system of finances which had its birth in the cradle of the conftitution, had not renewed their vigour under various forms. The mode of organizing the national credit, the confolidating and funding the public debt, the introduction in the political economy of the ufage of states which prolong their existence, or ward off their fall only by expedients, imperceptibly created a financiering clafs, who threaten to become the aristocratical order of the state. Several citizens, and among others, thofe who had aided in establishing independence with their purfes or their arms, conceived themselves aggrieved by thofe fifcal engagements. Hence an oppofition which declares itself between the farming or agricultural intereft, and that

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of

of the fifcal; federalism and anti-federalifm, which are founded on those new denominations, in proportion as the treasury ufurps a preponderance in the government and legislation; thence in fine, the ftate, divided into partifans and enemies of the treasurer and of his theories. In this new claflification of parties, the nature of things gave popularity to the latter: an innate instinct, if I may ufe the expreffion, caused the ears of the people to revolt at the name alone of treafurer and stock jobber; but the oppofite party, in confequence of its ability, obftinately perfifted in leaving to its adverfaries the fufpicious name of anti-federalift, while in reality they were friends of the conftitution, and enemies only of the excrefcencies which financiering theories threatened to attach to it.

5. It is useless to stop longer to prove that the monarchical system was interwoven with thofe novelties of finance, and that the friends of the latter favoured the attempts which were made in order to bring the constitution to the former by infenfible gradations.— The writings by influential men of this party prove it; their real opinions avow it, and the journals of the fenate are the depository of the first attempts.

6., Let us, therefore, free ourselves from the intermediate fpaces in which the progrefs of the fyftem is marked, fince they can add nothing to the proof of its existence. Let us pafs by its fympathy with our regenerating movements, while running in monarchical paths; let us arrive at the fituation in which our republican revolution has placed things and parties.

7. The anti-federalifts difembarrass themselves of an infignifi cant dénomination, and take that of patriots and of republicans. Their adverfaries become ariftocrats, notwithstanding their efforts to preferve the advantageous illufion of antient names; opinions clafh and prefs each other; the aristocratic attempts which formerly had appeared infignificant, are recollected; the treafurer, who is looked upon as their firft fource, is attacked; his operations and plans are denounced to the public opinions; nay, in the feflions of 1792 and 1793, a folemn inquiry into his administration was obtained. This first victory was to produce another, and it was hoped that faulty or innocent, the treasurer would retire, no lefs by neceffity in the one cafe, than from felf-love in the other. He, emboldened by the triumph which he obtained in the useless inquiry of his enemies, of which both objects proved equally abortive, feduced befides by the momentary reverse of republicanifm in Europe, removes the mask, and announces the approaching triumph of his principles.

8. In the mean time the popular focieties are formed; political ideas concentre them felves; the patriotic party unite and more clofely connect themselves; they gain a formidable majority in the legislature; the abafement of commerce, the flavery of navigation, and the audacity of England, ftrengthen it. A concert of

declarations

declarations and cenfures against the government atifes; at which the latter is even itself astonished.

9. Such was the fituation of things towards the clofe of the lait and the beginning of the prefent year. Let us pafs over the dif contents which were most generally expreffed in these critical moments. They have been sent to you at different periods, and in detail. In every quarter are arraigned the imbecility of the government towards Great Britain, the defenceless state of the coun try against poflible invafions, the coldnefs towards the French Republic: the fyftem of finance is attacked, which threatens eternifing the debt, under pretence of making it the guaranty of pub lic happiness the complication of that fyftem which withholds from general infpection all its operations; the alarming power of the influence it procures to a man whofe principles are regarded as dangerous; the preponderance which that man acquires from day to day in public measures; and in a word, the immoral and impolitic modes of taxation, which he at firft prefents as expedients, and afterwards raises to permanency.

10. In touching this laft point, we attain the principal complaint of the western people, and the oftenfible motive of their movements. Republicans by principle, independent by character and fituation, they could not but accede with enthufiafm to the crimi nations which we have sketched. But the excife above all affects them. Their lands are fertile, watered with the finest rivers in the world; but the abundant fruits of their labour run the rifque of perishing for the want of means of exchanging them, as thofe more happy cultivators do for objects which defire indicates to all men who have known only the enjoyments which Europe procures them. They therefore convert the excefs of their produce into liquors imperfectly fabricated, which badly fupply the place of thofe they might procure by exchange. The excife is created, and strikes at this confoling transformation; their complaints are anfwered by the only pretext that they are otherwise inacceffible to every fpecies of impoft. But why, in contempt of treaties, are they left, to bear the yoke of the feeble Spaniard, as to the Miflif fippi, for upwards of twelve years? Since when has an agricultural people fubmitted to the unjust capricious law of a people explorers of the precious metals? Might we not fuppofe that Madrid and Philadelphia mutually affifted in prolonging the flavery of the river; that the proprietors of a barren coaft are afraid left the Miffiflippi, once opened, and its numerous branches brought into activity, their fields might become deferts, and in a word, that commerce dreads having rivals in those interior parts, as foon as their inhabitants shall ceafe to be fubjects? This last supposition is but too well founded; an influential member of the fenate, Mr. Izard, one day in converfation undifguifedly announced it to me..

11. I fhall